James MacMillan conducts own works with NZSO this weekend

Eminent international composer James MacMillan
conducts own works with NZSO this weekend

Eminent Scottish composer and conductor James
MacMillan will conduct the NZSO in Hear &
Far, an annual concert tour that features the best
of international contemporary classical music alongside the
best of New Zealand contemporary classical music.

Dr
MacMillan will conduct two of his own works, his landmark
The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and
the more recent Woman of the
Apocalypse, as well as the world premiere of
The Clock Stops, a brand new
commission by New Zealand composer Lyell
Cresswell. It is the second new work by a Kiwi
composer to receive its world premiere in the NZSO 2014
Season.

“When you think about the opportunity to hear a
composer conduct their own works, it is unusual and special.
I think many musicians will get a real delight in seeing a
conductor who is realising their own music. And this is
quite rare.”

Famous composers who have
previously conducted definitive performances of their works
with the NZSO include Igor Stravinsky (1961) and William
Walton (1964).

MacMillan is internationally
acclaimed, and a foremost composer of his generation. He is
also active as a conductor. His compositional style combines
a multitude of influences but remains accessible. The
Guardian has described him as “a composer so confident
of his own musical language that he makes it instantly
communicative to his listeners.” MacMillan was appointed a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in
2004.

The premiere of The Confession of Isobel
Gowdie at the 1990 Proms with the BBC Scottish Symphony
Orchestra attracted great attention. The work is inspired by
the story of Isobel Gowdie, a victim of the witch hunt that
gripped Reformation Scotland. In 1662, under extreme
torture, she confessed to a number of acts of witchcraft and
was subsequently burnt at the stake. MacMillan says: “the
work craves absolution and offers Isobel Gowdie the mercy
and humanity that was denied her in the last days of her
life.”

MacMillan’s 2012 concerto for orchestra,
Woman of the Apocalypse, references the mysterious
character in the Biblical book of Revelation. MacMillan drew
ideas from images of this woman:

“Looking
through the different artworks over the centuries I was
inspired and given visual stimulus by a whole range of
different artists. I’m always interested in how either
visual images or even just ideas from literature or
scripture… can in fact transform into sound.”

New Zealand music is represented in this concert tour by
a new work by Lyell Cresswell, one of our great contemporary
composers. The NZSO commissioned Cresswell to write a work
to commemorate the Canterbury earthquakes. Although the work
began as a response to the Canterbury earthquake events, it
then took on a wider perspective.

Entitled The
Clock Stops, Cresswell’s work is a song-cycle,
incorporating poems by well-known Kiwi author Fiona Farrell
written for this purpose. The poems are about the history of
cities, ancient and modern. Cresswell and Farrell have
collaborated twice before, and this reprise of their
successful partnership promises a significant addition to
New Zealand contemporary music.

“All the music in
this song-cycle springs, in one way or another, from the
words – from the poems that Fiona Farrell has written for
it,” says Cresswell.

NZSO Chief Executive
Christopher Blake says of the commission:

“The
Clock Stops is connected to the devastation that
Christchurch has suffered. Lyell conveys the emotions that
we all feel about Christchurch and Canterbury through these
compelling settings of poems about cities and their
histories.”

The poems will be performed by New
Zealander and prominent international opera singer, bass
baritone Jonathan Lemalu. Frequently
performing on the world’s most important operatic,
orchestral and recital stages, Lemalu is one of the leading
singers of his generation.

In Hear & Far the NZSO
will again bring audiences the finest compositional voices
of today from home and overseas.

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